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Tour de Romandie

"This Is The Last Time We Can Hurt Him Before The Tour" — Tour De Romandie 2026 Stage 4 Anzère Eve-Of-Stage Briefing, 152km Sion–Anzère, A Single 18.4km/7.4% Summit At 1,500m Altitude Where Aldag Has Told Lipowitz He Has To Empty Himself Or Concede The Overall Tonight

CYCLING LOOKOUT • 1 MAY 2026

Friday evening Sion. The Romandie peloton is into its hotels in the Valais by 19:30, the post-Mollendruz dossiers have been printed, and the only conversation in the team-bus paddock at the Place du Midi is what to do about the 18.4-kilometre, 7.4 per cent climb to the Anzère summit on Saturday afternoon. Tadej Pogačar sits in yellow by 34 seconds over Florian Lipowitz, 44 over Marc Hirschi, 52 over Santiago Buitrago. By Sunday evening the Lausanne TT will have favoured the world champion in three of his four previous Romandie attempts. Saturday's Anzère summit is, as Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe directeur sportif Rolf Aldag put it to RTS at the team-bus debrief, "the last time we can hurt him before the Tour".

The route is unusually clean. Out of Sion at 13:15, north along the Rhône valley at false-flat for 35 kilometres, a flat 60-kilometre run-in to the foot of the climb at Saint-Léonard, and then nothing but the Anzère ascent — a 1,500-metre gain at an honest gradient with three pitches above 9 per cent inside the final five kilometres. No descent. No false flat. No technical finish. Whoever crosses the summit first wins the day. RTS expects the line at 17:48 local.

The forecast has tightened across the day. MétéoSuisse's 19:00 bulletin gives 17°C in the Sion valley with a benign 10-15km/h south-easterly that reduces to a calm at the summit; sunshine until 16:00, building cumulus in the Anzère bowl by the line, no rain forecast on the climb itself. The descent off the Mollendruz that defined Friday afternoon is not a feature of Stage 4 — and the technical wet-road book that Pogačar exploited so completely on the Mollendruz queen stage is not in play.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG arrived in Sion with a clear stage plan: Yates, Großschartner and Soler ride the valley, Brandon McNulty closes the climb to within 4 kilometres of the summit, Pogačar finishes the day on his own. The world champion is now 1/12 outright across the major UK exchanges and 4/11 to defend the Tour de France in July. He skipped the Friday-evening team presser, instead sitting in the team-bus stretching with Sepp Kuss — the two riders share a coach, Iñigo San Millán, and have ridden the Anzère climb together five times since 2023.

Aldag's Friday-evening brief to Lipowitz, leaked to Cyclingnews after the meeting and confirmed by a second Red Bull source: attack from 6 kilometres to go, take Hirschi and Buitrago with you for as long as they will work, and if Pogačar comes around to take the bonification sprint at the line, accept it and consolidate the podium. The Red Bull race coach, Thomas Hofer, has Lipowitz's overnight watt files at within 1.4 watts/kg of his Tour of the Alps overall ride. The 23-year-old Bavarian has the form. The Friday Mollendruz did not surprise him. The question is whether he can produce a single 6-kilometre full-gas effort that the world champion cannot match.

Behind the GC chase, the Saturday breakaway is unusually attractive. Healy is expected to launch from the foot of the climb for EF Education-EasyPost as a stage hunter, riding for the day after a quiet Eschborn-Frankfurt; Felix Großschartner, freed from UAE GC duties once Pogačar is in the wheel of his teammates, will look at the same window. Visma-Lease A Bike have authorised Kuss to ride a free role on Saturday and Sunday, expected to test the climb at 4 kilometres to the summit; the Visma race-coach group around Plugge has briefed Wilco Kelderman to mark Buitrago for as long as the Bahrain rider holds Lipowitz's wheel.

The bookmaker line has tightened in lockstep with Pogačar's GC margin. The world champion is 5/4 to take a fourth consecutive Romandie stage win, 1/12 outright, 1/4 to also win Sunday's Lausanne TT. Lipowitz is 4/1 for the stage, Hirschi 8/1 the home pick, Buitrago 12/1, Healy 14/1 the breakaway hope, Kuss 16/1 the Visma stage card, Großschartner 25/1. Roglič — now ninth on GC at 2'34" after his Friday Mollendruz collapse — is no longer priced. Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe sport directors confirmed at the Friday-evening press window the Slovenian will ride free for stages on Saturday and Sunday and is no longer racing for an overall finish.

The 79th Tour de Romandie is, on paper, decided. Pogačar's 34-second margin over Lipowitz is structurally identical to Vingegaard's 33-second margin over the same rider going into the final mountain stage of the 2025 Critérium du Dauphiné — and that race went the way of the leader. But Anzère, at 1,500 metres, is the highest finish of the 2026 Romandie, the kind of altitude Lipowitz handled better than Pogačar at last summer's Tour de l'Avenir Espoirs reunion ride. There is one number for the world champion to produce. There is one number for Lipowitz to find. Saturday afternoon will tell us, by 17:48 in the Anzère bowl, which of the two is in front.

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